Tesla HW3 Runs Smaller FSD Model Than AI4; Performance To Be Similar
Yesterday we broke the news that Tesla has finally been able to add support for hardware 3 with FSD v12.5.1.4. The update is version 2024.26.15 and is currently being tested by Tesla employees.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Autopilot director, commented on our article and gave additional insight into how Tesla was able to add support for HW3 and what they’re working on next. He confirmed that Tesla’s FSD team was able to achieve similar performance between AI4 and HW3 with FSD V12.5
Similar Performance, Smaller Model
One of the key points Ashok mentioned was that HW3’s FSD 12.5 release has similar, but not exactly the same performance as the AI4 release. This appears to be due to the smaller AI model for HW3, which has been compute-constrained by memory and speed limitations.
Of course, Ashok also tells us to mind the fact that the parameter counts and size of the AI model aren’t exactly everything. Hardware 3 still has the advantage of being the primary focus of Tesla’s FSD teams until the new Supercomputer Cluster at Giga Texas comes online. That, plus the tremendous reams of data that Tesla has acquired from Hardware 3 vehicles on the road today means that the current Hardware 3 version of FSD V12.5 is probably in a pretty good spot.
Larger Model Coming to HW3
It looks like the Tesla FSD team is working on emulating AI4 in Hardware 3 now, as there are some unique hardware-based operations supported on AI4, that aren’t supported on Hardware 3. Ashok says that in order for Tesla to support the larger model on HW3 they’ll need to implement these AI4’s hardware features with software on HW3. He confirms that Tesla is actively implementing and verifying these operations and they plan to support the larger FSD model on HW3 in the future.
Right now it sounds like Tesla is compressing the model, but still able to get close to the same FSD performance of AI4.
We’re looking forward to seeing FSD 12.5 hitting HW3 vehicles in the upcoming weeks if all goes well with initial employee testing.
NEWS: Tesla has added HW3 support with FSD version 12.5.1.4 https://t.co/i1AkCGB5y7
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 21, 2024
Positive Future
One of the keys here is Ashok has focused on mentioning that the same FSD V12.5 model can run on both hardware platforms in the future. He noted that the performance was similar, but not the same. We’re not quite sure how big the difference is going to be just yet, but it looks to be negligible – especially from the positivity behind his post.
Ashok also doesn’t mention FSD V12.6 or future major iterations of FSD, but we aren’t worried. It sounds like Tesla is still committed to supporting HW3 in future iterations of FSD working, so it looks like it’ll be in a good spot for the foreseeable future.